Geek O Geek

Raven Zachary is bright, motivated, an organizer but more important a mentor.

I can relate to some of what drives developer event organizers. Its sheer amazement to be surrounded by raw creativity and help build structure with networking user groups, barcamps and meetups to create environments where innovators iterate to build real businesses.

I knew Raven as the developer behind the Obama Iphone App. I met Raven at IphoneDevCamp3 at Yahoo. Everywhere I heard from iphone developers how he encouraged them to build on iphone. All this self-motivated with no help from Apple. Inspiring!

I have seen a 13yr old demo a facebook app at the bay area facebook meetup.

Today I saw a 10yr old go on stage to demo an iphone app she built with her dad’s help at the Iphonedevcamp #ipdc3 at Yahoo with this weekend.

Inspired!!! Geeks and innovators inspire me. This is a blog about how such innovations take birth and this one just floored me.

Does it sound strange that Kyle Sollenberger started a twitter app to help his facebook app?

That is a pattern I see where developers migrate from one app ecosystem to another focused on solving a problem for themselves. Earlier we heard a similar story from ChatterMonkey

Cotweet has used twitterville community to reach the early adopters of brands to help them build and scale their product.

Update: Co-tweet raised $1.1 yday. Also they are based out of Pennsylvania and are moving to silicon valley.

It takes a certain type of geek to attend WhereCamp, especially if you work for a large company like Google. These are the people who go out look for new innovations and provide integrations and adaptions.

I met Tom Brown of Google Transit team at WhereCamp 2009. They are planning more real time access.

140conf was an amazing collection of minds, each with a unique voice in all areas of life using twitter for real-time conversations across a diverse geo, beliefs, passions and walks of lives.

There were many twitter app entrepreneurs, many using twitter as their platform, many connecting across the web, desktop and into other twitter apps. What was common was their passion and entrepreneurial energy!

Chatterbox had the best marketing give away with their squealing monkey. Founder Todd Clayton shared his story of how his team bootstrapped with consulting work to build out chatterbox with a passion to help us make sense of twitter data streams for brands.

Chatterbox started with a facebook app called “I have kids” and now has Chatterbox on twitter for brands. Classic example of organically scaling and growing in social app space! I love it!

I met Kevin Marks at Google IO and asked him about OpenID and where it is headed.

Passion for Open standards by people like Kevin drove Opensocial at Google and adoption of OpenID by facebook.

My passion is for BottomUp Innovation by geeks in various app ecosystems. My heros are innovative developers who create new apps on facebook, twitter, iphone, nokia etc. They build businesses, inspire new developers  to create a new application ecosystem one app at a time.

I have been interviewing developers who create cool apps hoping it will inspire many others to follow their dreams and unleash their creativity. You the cast of characters from JeffPulver’s #140conf twitter conference have inspired me to finally get this blog up!!!!

The first of my videos is of Loren Britcher, founder of Tweetie, twitter app.

Here you’ll see videos of geeks, and the architects of the app ecosystems. I aspire to collect many stories and cover the topics that drives the growth of these ecosystems and to keep it truly global as possible.

Share a comment of ping me on twitter @sujamthe with your ideas, suggestions and comments on what you like, who do you want covered and if this has inspired you!!!

Best Wishes,
Sudha Jamthe